1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to electronic displays, specifically, to an improved method of displaying electronic database reports via either an intranet or the Internet.
2. Description of the Prior Art
While the speed of searching the Internet for products and services is increasing, there is a technical difficulty that slows the ability of computer users to view the information in downloadable files. When a user accesses an Internet website on the World Wide Web, the user computer establishes a link to the website host server using a Full Process HTTP GET Request. A process is an execution path through one or more programs. The process has an execution start and a dispatching priority. The unit of dispatching is usually referred to as a “thread” or a “lightweight process”. When this link to the server is established, in what can be called a “handshake,” the server and the computer exchange identifying information, and this handshake allows the server to transmit information that then appears on the computer screen for the user to view. At the end of this process, when the screen display is complete, the server and computer let go of the handshake. When this information is a collection of reports from a database, and the database contains more reports than can be displayed on the computer screen at the same time, then all of the reports are not transmitted and displayed at once, but words or other displays representing each one of the additional reports may be displayed on the computer screen. These representations are electronic links to the additional database report files available on the server. If the user wants to access additional files, the user must click on one of the links and wait for the user computer to execute another Full Process HTTP GET Request, establish a handshake with the server, and download the file. The communication from the user click to the user receiving the file contents is called the “server round trip.” The time it takes to complete the server round trip is called the “latency period.” For each latency period, establishing the connection, the handshake, may take most of the time. Users must wait during the latency period before viewing the requested information.
An example of this system, found in the prior art, is Sabre Holdings Corporation's website, “Travelocity”, which is used for making airplane travel reservations. The user submits airports and dates as a query to the server. The server searches its database for combinations of flights for that query and produces a database report. When the user chooses a flight, the user has to wait while the computer interacts with the server to find and display the requested detailed information. If the user changes dates, the user has to wait while the user computer again queries the Web server for a new database report of possible flights.
Another problem in the prior art is that there are websites that compare products and services in a vertical market in detail; but a vendor in that market cannot automatically submit their own product or service for the public to view on a single web page, together with the other products or services available in that vertical market. An example of a vertical market is any aggregation of vendors and their users of one type or class of product or service. Examples of vertical markets include: laboratory testing, pharmaceuticals, travel, stocks and bonds, bulk chemicals, and airlines. A good example of vertical markets includes all markets commonly delineated as categories in a telephone yellow pages directory. Today, there are some yellow pages websites that list vendors in a vertical market; however, they continue to look like their physical counterparts and do not show details of the items unless the user clicks on links to the individual websites of those vendors. This again causes the user to wait each time the user clicks on a link and moves to another website and downloads information. In addition, moving to other websites may cause the user to have difficulty backtracking to the website of original interest, becoming lost.
A third problem in the prior art is that there is no system for finding services or products that are not available on the World Wide Web. Rather, the web is limited only to products or services already represented on line.
There are two methods in the prior art that are methods of downloading files for display on computers. These are Nawaz (U.S. Pat. No. 5,959,621, Sep. 28, 1999) and, PointCast, which is a method described in Nawaz. The PointCast and Nawaz methods require the user to download the respective application program software to the user computer and install that application. Nawaz adds the additional step of integrating it with the user desktop, before the user is able to download and view the downloaded information. In addition, Nawaz includes a marquee on a computer screen to present the user with links to files the user can select on a server computer to download and view information. Each time the user selects such a link, however, the user still has the problem of having to wait for the latency period of successive Full Process HTTP GET Request server round trips. Because the information files reside on servers remote from the user's computer, the user must keep the user's computer connected to the Internet while continuing to research the links using the Nawaz or PointCast methods.